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LATH -AND 
> -SORROW 

WILLI 5-DUIT - PIERCY 





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DEATH AND ITS SORROW 



DEATH AND ITS SORROW 



ED 



DEATH AND ITS SORROW 



By 
Willis Duff Piercy 




New York and Washington 

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1908 



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LIBRARY of CONGKEvSS 

(l wu Copies Keceivt* 
MAY 28 1908 

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Copyright, 1908, by 
The Neale Publishing Company 



DEDICATION 

This book had its inspiration and origin 
in the recent death of my father, between 
whom and myself there was as close and 
tender a relation, I suspect, as ever existed be- 
tween father and only son. His memory 
shall always be to me a gracious benediction. 
It shall be a plot of green sward on a heath 
of uncertainties. It shall walk with me as I 
walk, and lie down with me when I lie down. 
And it shall be my shepherd when I get lost 
at night on the hills of Life. To my father's 
memory the little volume is affectionately 
dedicated. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

The sting of death is bad enough at best. 
And sorrow must be borne by each individual 
for himself. Grief does not deal by proxy or 
through attorneys. Moreover, no one can 
tell another how to bear bereavement. Most 
letters of condolence and expressions of sym- 
pathy are but empty words, well-aimed but 
flying wide of the target. However, there is 
a best that can be made of every evil. There 
is a way of bearing sorrow that is wise and 
courageous and a way that is unwise and un- 
manly. This little book has been prepared 
in the small hope that it might possibly fur- 
nish a crumb to some comfort-hungry soul 
bereft mourning over a new-made grave. 

It is scarcely necessary to say that the lit- 
erary passages on death, sorrow, and hope, 
in the fourth chapter, are not at all meant to 
be exhaustive. They are but typical and have 
been selected with a view to representing as 
many different phases and points of view as 
possible of these most vital of human expe- 



12 author's preface 

riences. Yet it is believed that many of the 
noblest passages in our literature on these 
subjects are included here. 

Willis Duff Piercy. 
Mt. Vernon, Illinois. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter. Page. 

I The Loosening of the Silver Cord, 15 

II Death's Kingdom and the King, . . 33 

III The Baptism of Sorrow, 50 

IV Death, Sorrow and Hope in Litera- 

ture, 65 



CHAPTER I 

THE LOOSENING OF THE SILVER CORD 

A light burns low in a quiet chamber. 
There are subdued voices and soft footsteps 
about the house. A bit of crepe is on the 
door and out yonder in the cemetery is a new 
grave waiting to receive on the morrow its 
silent tenant. The mystic guest who has 
come into the home is not a new one. He 
has been knocking at the doors of humanity 
since the world's daybreak, and I suspect he 
will be found knocking there still in the gray 
shadows of the twilight of time. 

Another ship has sailed off to "the undis- 
covered country, from whose bourn no trav- 
eller returns." A father, mother, husband, 
wife, child, brother, sister or friend has 
slipped away into the misty forever. "God's 
finger touched him and he slept." Life's 
dawns and its sunsets, its Mays and its Octo- 
bers, its storms, fevers, blunders, its joys and 
its sorrows, its victories and its defeats, its 



1 6 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

calumnies and its misunderstood motives are 
over. No more "heartache and the thousand 
natural shocks that flesh is heir to." The 
tragedy has closed and the theater is dark 
forever. The light has been blown out of 
eyes that once shone with life and love; a 
voice has been stilled whose accents were 
your sweetest symphony. Flowers are piled 
up where there is no power to see them and 
praise is poured into ears that have lost their 
hearing. It is beautiful in human nature to 
forget the faults of the dead. But it is more 
beautiful to remember the virtues of the liv- 
ing. Dust to dust is the law of life, and 
soon there shall be nothing left but marble 
and memory. 

At sunset on the first day of the spring of 
1906 my father crossed the bar and sailed 
away into the silences. The sinking sun was 
in keeping with the close of his earthly day 
and the beginning spring marked his entrance 
into the new life of immortality. As I stood 
under the gray skies and in the blustering 
winds of that March afternoon, chilled in 
body and soul, and saw my father lowered to 
his narrow couch for the sleep without a wak- 



LOOSENING THE SILVER CORD 1 7 

ing it seemed to me that my happiness, my 
hope, and my heart were being buried in the 
casket. It was night in my soul without moon 
or morning; it was sea without isle or com- 
pass; winter, without April or cloud-rift; 
there were briars without roses, and the hun- 
gry gnawings of despair ate my spirit. I won- 
dered why death was; why it had touched 
my father and had passed by so many less 
worthy and useful. Some men are cum- 
brances to society and to themselves ; he was 
the useful promoter of its welfare, healer of 
the sick, cheerer of the discouraged, counselor 
of the perplexed, and the friend of every 
good thing. They had been left and he had 
been taken. I wondered why death had 
spurned the implorings of those who were 
tired of life and had sought out one so full 
of the joyousness of living. Why had my 
soul been selected as a target for the light- 
ning of God's wrath while the streams of hap- 
piness flowed without interruption through 
the spirits of others? Out of the depths of 
my soul welled up the old, old query of Job, 
"If a man die, shall he live again?" or did 



1 8 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

that grave end it all? And if there were an- 
other life beyond the tomb, what were its con- 
ditions? Should I see my father again and 
know him as I had known him in the happy 
days that were no more? Did he from the 
heights of a better life look down upon this 
little existence of mine, though I from the 
depths of the valley could see naught of him? 
I heard the minister's "The Lord gave, and 
the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the 
name of the Lord." But if he had taken 
away my father specially and purposely, 
leaving other fathers more desirous of going 
and less worthy of staying I could not bless 
him for it. Why should I ? Out of the Gol- 
gotha of my sorrow came the echo of that 
greater wail, "My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me?" 

Nearness of vision destroys perspective. If 
one would look at a painting to the best ad- 
vantage he must not stand too close. The 
architectural symmetry and beauty of a 
building appear only at a point more or less 
remote. The outlines of the Great Stone 
Face revealed themselves only to the ob- 
server who was wise enough to look from a 



LOOSENING THE SILVER CORD 1 9 

sufficient distance. Two honest men cannot 
always themselves adjudicate a matter of 
mutual concern ; each one is so close to it that 
he sees but one side. No one has an entirely 
secure place in politics, war, or letters until 
posterity has had opportunity to look at him 
from afar and to weigh him in the unerring 
balances of time. We cannot see the majes- 
tic proportions of a mountain when we stand 
at its base. We must look far off. Distance 
not only u lends enchantment," but it is nec- 
essary for giving proportion and perspective. 

As space is to material objects, so is time 
to the things of the mind. The events of hu- 
man history cannot be seen in clear perspec- 
tive or their real importance accurately de- 
termined until days or months or years or 
centuries have put themselves between ob- 
server and event. We ourselves are often too 
close to contemporaneous men and things to 
judge them entirely well. The final tribunal 
is time. 

So, stealing through the months or the 
years there comes to the soul bereft a clearer 
view of death and bereavement. And with 
this clearer view comes a subtle change over 



20 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

the mind of the mourner. The hard angles 
of anguish begin to soften; despair com- 
mences to lighten with the daybreak of hope ; 
and rebellious resentment merges into some- 
thing of resignation. Some of the questions 
that oppress the spirit of him who mourns 
over a new-made grave are answered wholly 
or in part ; others remain forever unanswered 
and unanswerable. We cry them in the mid- 
night of our anguish, and for a reply we get 
but the sighing of the night wind among the 
branches; we whisper them at the daybreak 
of our hope, but the whispering dies away 
into unanswering silence; we shout them in 
the valley of life, and the far-off hills hurl 
them back to us unanswered ; we moan them 
on the sea-shore of death, and our reply is the 
everlasting wail of the waves. 

No one is singled out for affliction. Sor- 
row is race-wide and time-long. There is 
scarcely a home into which Death has not en- 
tered or a soul that does not bear his scars. 
Tennyson thinks the universality of sorrow 
does not dull the edge of a particular grief. 



LOOSENING THE SILVER CORD 21 

"That loss is common would not make 
My own less bitter, rather more; 
Too common! Never morning wore 
To evening but some heart did break." 

It seems to me otherwise. If bereavement 
came to all men accidentally, then its very 
width would make my own pain more heavy. 
But the universality of sorrow precludes ac- 
cident and argues design. Things common 
to all men must have a common source. And 
this common source must be man's great Cre- 
ator and Law-giver. So beneath the fact of 
universal sorrow I see the law, and back of 
the law stands the Law-giver, and in the great 
heart of the Law-giver I see goodness to man. 
The vision goes no farther. But this is far 
enough for the hope that in some way out of 
grief and the grave there shall grow some- 
thing good to men. 

"Behold, we know not anything; 

I can but trust that good shall fall 
At last — far off — at last to all, 
And every winter change to spring." 

The Lord takes away just as he gives; 
not specially, but by operation of general law. 
When the natural terms of birth are met, a 



22 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

life is born into the world; when the condi- 
tions of death are fulfilled, that same life 
passes out of the world. The law of death 
has no more enemies or favorites than the law 
of birth. Death is no respecter of persons. 
He cares no more for a "shining mark" than 
for a dull one. 

I would not undertake to say that God 
never specially interferes in the affairs of 
men. Sometimes he may do so. Occasion- 
ally I think I see his foot-prints in human 
history. At times, far down the vista of 
things spiritual, I get glimpses of the 

"far off divine event 
Toward which the whole creation moves." 

But in the main God governs us with laws 
that have "no variableness, neither shadow of 
turning"; laws that are awful in their uni- 
versality and steadfastness. He has written 
these laws in every rock and season and grass- 
blade and rain-drop and star and song and 
soul; all over the physical universe without 
and the spiritual world within. He has given 
us the law-book and mental eyes for reading 
it. We are responsible for results. 



LOOSENING THE SILVER CORD 23 

If I fling myself down from a height, that 
law which was devised for man's safety be- 
comes the agency of my destruction. But it 
is hardly fair to blame God for my ignorance 
or wilfulness or to charge him with having 
taken me away. If I drink water containing 
the germs of disease, death may come in the 
cup. But the laws of disease germs are writ- 
ten all over the law-book. If man has not 
read them, God is not at fault. Man's cu- 
pidity or his hate may impel him to war. 
And his brother may slay him. But his 
brother and not God is the author of his 
death. Or rather his own misdoing is the 
murderer. The law-book solemnly declares, 
"Thou shalt not pile fuel too fast upon the 
fires of youth. 1 ' I may violate this law. But 
for every hour of excess in the morning I 
must pay an hour of life toward twilight. Is 
it just to hold God responsible for the short- 
ening of my day? It is written in the divine 
statutes that disease is transmittable from pa- 
rent to child. Why this has to be, I do not 
understand. But it is the law. When parents 
overlook or disregard this law and the child 
withers away before it has had time to bios- 



24 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

som, who is to blame? The child is patheti- 
cally innocent and God inflicts no penalty 
upon the parents without first declaring the 
law. 

If I believed that God wilfully and 
specially tears away a baby from its mother's 
breast, a husband from the arms of his new- 
made wife, a president from; his people, a 
poor mother from her wondering orphans, I 
could not worship him as a God of love. I 
should rather fear and hate him as the incar- 
nation of harshness and cruelty. 

The theory that there is concealed in these 
deaths some wise design which shall be un- 
folded to us by and by may be true, but it is 
not satisfying to me. I do not find sufficient 
evidence for it. Life is sweet and good and 
I love the companionship of my own. I am 
not one of those who would not call their 
loved ones back if they could. I would mine 
and would gladly give all I have if it would 
bring him to me again. However, as this 
little volume will attempt to show later, good 
does spring up for us out of the death of our 
own. But it springs up according to general 
law and not by special design. I can see how 



LOOSENING THE SILVER CORD 25 

the belief that a loved one has been specially 
called away might work some temporary con- 
solation. But with a little more thought and 
a little more observation will come the reac- 
tionary doubt. And the doubt will engender 
rebellion and bitterness. It seems best there- 
fore to try to find the truth from the first. 

I think we need to revise somewhat our 
theology. We need to shift the point of 
view. Throughout the ages humanity has 
strained its sense? for special voices and 
special signs and special revelations of Divin- 
ity. It has thought it had found God in the 
voice of the oracle, the mystic leaves of the 
sibyl and the flare of the burning bush. It 
has gone on pilgrimages to Delphi and the 
Ganges and Mecca and Jerusalem. It has 
deposited its reason and its conscience in 
books and priests and prophets. But during 
all this time God has been writing himself on 
every page of his two great law-books, the 
law-book of nature and the law-book of spirit. 
And he has been all the time saying, " Who- 
soever will, let him come and read." He is 
found alike in the strata of rocks and in the 
strata of souls. Every leaf that swings in 



26 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

the forest is a sibylline leaf and every bush 
burns with God's presence and every song of 
thrush is an oracular voice. He is found no 
more on Sinai than he is on the little hill 
that stands sentinel over the humblest hut. 
The truest revelation of himself is not that 
given to a solitary prophet on a hill-top, but 
. the revelation found in his universal laws un- 
folded to all men in the open court of Physi- 
cal Science and Psychology. Every place is a 
holy place and every hour is a holy hour and 
every soul is its own prophet and priest. The 
mistake that we have been making is in di- 
vorcing too far Science and Religion. There 
is nothing more religious than science and re- 
ligion ought to be scientific. If our religion 
and our theology had contained less of orig- 
inal sin and more of science, less of how man 
fell and more of how to get him up, less of 
how to curb apostasy and more of how to 
control appetite, less of hell hereafter and 
more of hygiene here, less of baptism and 
more of bacteria, I think we should both have 
pleased God and helped ourselves. 

Nature has a way of taking care of her 
own. For the alleviation of grief she ad- 



LOOSENING THE SILVER CORD 27 

ministers some anaesthetics. One of these is 
an inability to realize constantly and to the 
full that our loved ones have actually de- 
parted forever. We refuse to comprehend 
that the silver cord has been forever loosed 
and the golden bowl forever broken. Our 
minds cling to the old associations and the 
old relations and the old mental images. It 
seems as if death had not come. Memory 
and imagination keep still walking by our 
side those who have quitted our paths for- 
ever. There are times when the truth falls 
upon us with terrific force and fury. If these 
times were constant the strongest spirit would 
break down under them. But the anaesthetic 
gets in its work and after dinner or on the 
morrow or next week the pain is temporarily 
lulled and our minds rest again for a time, 
partially oblivious of the mighty change, 
among the days that were. 

Another one of these anaesthetics is ac- 
tivity. I think it is best for the newly be- 
reaved soul to take up life again in the old 
paths as soon as possible. You cannot flee 
from your grief any more than you can from 
your own shadow. Sorrow must be fought 



28 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

out upon the battleground of your own mind. 
I doubt, therefore, if travel or change of 
scene will work much alleviation. It is a 
right mental attitude more than external sur- 
roundings that helps grief. 

"It is the mind that maketh good or ill, 
That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor." 

Return at once to the shop, the office, the 
field or the fire-side and resume your weaving 
at the loom of life. There are others de- 
pendent upon you and they must be provided 
for. Besides, there are exhilaration and 
health for body and spirit in honest toil. I 
am not sure but that activity is stronger even 
than sleep as a "balm of hurt minds." 

Tears are another anaesthetic for the re- 
lief of those moments of excessive anguish. 
"To weep, is to make less the depth of grief." 
The eyes are no more the windows than they 
are the flood-gates of the soul. When the 
heart is too full of sorrow a part of it over- 
flows in tears and the pressure is relieved. To 
weep is Nature's way and Nature is wise. 
Tears are the spiritual dew which keeps the 
gardens of our souls from drying up. 



LOOSENING THE SILVER CORD 29 

The great anaesthetic which Nature uses 
for stealing away the sting of grief is time. 
Time is the wizard that works wonders in hu- 
man history and human hearts. Time is al- 
ways in his work-shop though he cannot be 
seen. He cannot be hurried or retarded. He 
never loses a moment at his hammering on 
the anvil of change. He is the perfect re- 
vealer of the false and the friend of the 
great. He takes the measure of everything 
mortal and his measurements are true and 
final. Time turns disaster into benediction. 
And he silently heals the wounds of sorrow 
though the scars remain forever. 

One thing Death leaves us when he robs 
us of our loved ones, and that is memory. 
Among all the mystic faculties of the soul 
surely memory is the most precious. It is 
memory that gives continuity and persistence 
and coherence to the ego and keeps it from 
being swallowed up in the bottomless now. 
It is possible for us to live so as to make our 
memories strings of golden yesterdays. Or 
we may make them bunches of dry and shriv- 
eled and rotten wormwood. There is a world 
that we live in other than this busy, hallooing, 
grimy, nerve-wracking sphere of dollars and 



30 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

politics and war. We drift away to it at the 
daybreak of spring mornings, out with sun 
and bird and dew-drop before the selfishness 
of the day is begun ; or strolling alone 
through golden autumn afternoons and 
woods; or sitting around the fire on winter 
nights thinking of the days that were but are 
no more. It is the world of the past and its 
port of entry is memory. We are all back 
again at the old home on the hill, no longer 
scattered by distance or separated by death. 
I am again a boy with bare feet and tattered 
hat and turned-up trousers and sun-burnt 
cheek dreaming dreams that have not come 
true. Voices laugh and shout from out my 
boyhood days — voices whose last faint echoes 
have died away forever from the hills of life. 
Forms stand before me with smiling faces 
and outstretched hands — forms that have re- 
turned to dust in the long ago. Memory is 
our intellectual savings bank in which we de- 
posit the past. It is a kind of sounding-board 
whence come back to us the "lost chords" of 
all that has been. On its more hallowed side 
it is the depository of lost faces and silenced 
voices. Oh, thou blessed world of memory ! 



LOOSENING THE SILVER CORD 31 

Thou arl at K*;isi one step forward toward 
immortality. 

Those whose loved ones have fallen pre- 
maturely should reCOgniZC that the true meas- 
ure of a life is not the ealendar or any unit or 
multiple of it. The important question is not 
how long one has lived hut how much. In 

this throbbing, twentieth-century civilization 

of ours we live more in one week than our an- 
cestors of the Dark Ages lived in ten years. 
And there are some individual souls that can 
pack more of real life into a single day than 
others ahout them are ahle to put into a. 
month. Some men are cut down hefore the 
noon-time of their life and usefulness. Hut 
what mornings they live! Shakespeare fell 
at fifty-two and Byron at thirty-six and Shel- 
ley at thirty and John Keats at twenty-six. 
But he lived long enough to sfiow us that "a 
thing of beauty is a joy forever. " And the 
victorious victim of Calvary, who has touched 
mankind deeper than any other character of 
history, was hut little more than thirty that 
day when he was led out to he crucified be- 
tween two thieves. The numher of great 
men who have died early in life might be 



32 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

almost indefinitely multiplied. Many men of 
early death have written themselves deep in 
the hearts of their country and their age, 
while others whom Death has spared until 
dark have scarcely made their presence known. 
I have always thought these lines from Bai- 
ley's "Festus" among the most beautiful of 
our literature. 

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not 

breaths ; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count time by heart throbs. 

He most lives, 
Who thinks most — feels the noblest, — acts the 

best." 



CHAPTER II 



death's kingdom and the king 



"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
Await alike the inevitable hour; 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 

— Gray. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow 
of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy 
rod and thy staff they comfort me." 

— Bible. 

Death is one of the universals. He fol- 
lows in the footsteps of life and finally over- 
takes all things that live. Grass-blade and 
forest-tree, insect and man obey his law. The 
natural period of a life may be fifteen min- 
utes or four hundred years. But it is finally 
lost in death. Man may subjugate all other 
living things, he may harness the forces of 
nature, build empires and destroy them, think 
out civilizations and bring them to pass, or 
pry into the secrets of stars and ages, but he 
yields at last to the grave. Death comes 

3 



34 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

lingering or he comes like an eye-wink; he 
confronts us boldly or he steals upon us un- 
awares ; he comes with the roses of June, or 
with the icicles of December ; in the blush of 
the dawning, or he steals under the black pa- 
vilion of midnight. But he comes. Sea, 
storm, flame, and fever are the horses of his 
chariot. Pistol, poison, poniard, and pneu- 
monia are his sullen body-guard. He comes 
in the prick of a pin, or in the roar of artil- 
lery; he builds his nest in the germs of dis- 
ease, or he creeps in through the crevices of 
old age. He mows down one or a thousand. 
But he comes, he comes, he comes. Money 
cannot buy Death off, sheriffs cannot eject 
him or armies stop the progress of his tri- 
umphal march. The blood of all the lambs 
in ancient Israel sprinkled on our door-posts 
will not turn aside the Angel of Death when 
he has once determined to visit our homes. 

What an innumerable company of the 
dead! Babes that have not yet learned to 
lisp their mothers' names, strong men of 
whom the zenith sun has made no shadow, 
maidens just reaching out for the full-blown 
rose of life, and gray-haired sires who have 



death's kingdom and king 35 

drunk life's goblet almost empty — all lie 
down together in the sleep eternal. 

"Nigh to a grave that was newly-made, 
Leaned a sexton old on his earth-worn spade; 
His work was done, and he paused to wait, 
The funeral train at the open gate. 
A relic of bygone days was he, 
And his locks were white as the foamy sea; 
And these words came from his lips so thin : 
'I gather them in, I gather them in. 

" 'I gather them in ! for man or boy, 
Year after year of grief and joy, 
I've builded the houses that lie around, 
In every nook of this burial ground ; 
Mother and daughter, father and son, 
Come to my solitude, one by one ; 
But come they strangers or come they kin, 
I gather them in, I gather them in. 

" 'Many are w T ith me but still I'm alone, 

I'm King of the dead — and I make my throne 

On a monument slab of marble cold ; 

And my scepter of rule is the spade I hold ; 

Come they from cottage or come they from hall, 

Mankind are my subjects, all, all, all! 

Let them loiter in pleasure or toilfully spin, 

I gather them in, I gather them in.' " 

Death has sprinkled his frost over all the 
glories of the past. Where now are Pericles 



36 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

and his Athens; Rome, and its Caesars? 
Where is the chattering court of Louis, and 
the splendid England of Elizabeth? Cleo- 
patra no longer charms kings, Napoleon no 
more carves out empires with his sword, and 
Cicero has ceased arousing Rome with his 
tongue. Where are the halls of our Saxon 
fathers and the scop and the boar's head 
and the battle cry? They have all gone with 
the splendors of Babylon and Belshazzar. 
Listen to Omar Khayyam: 

"They say the Lion and the Lizard keep 
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank 
deep : 
And Bahram, that great hunter — the Wild Ass 
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep." 

Death is no respecter of persons. He 
beckons alike to the saint in his prayers and 
the sinner in his sins. He calls the king from 
his throne and the peasant from his hut. He 
puts away in the same bed philosopher and 
loon. He cares no more for Dives than he 
does for Lazarus; or Lazarus, than Dives. 
Beauty and passion, hideousness and satiety 
arc the same to him. He climbs alike the 
gallows of the criminal and the cross of the 



death's kingdom and king 37 

martyr. Preference is not in his lexicon. 
He releases men from their assets and their 
liabilities and dissolves all the relations of 
life. He re-writes the laws of real estate and 
makes all men freeholders of equal tracts of 
land six feet long. Death is the herald of 
the only perfect brotherhood of man. In the 
republic of the grave there is neither friend 
or enemy, plaintiff or defendant, debtor or 
creditor, master or servant, German, Demo- 
crat, captain or Protestant. All are but men, 
dwelling equally together in a strange and 
awful brotherhood. Mighty man of mil- 
lions, spurn to-day if you will yon ditch dig- 
ger; but he shall be your brother by and by. 
Life comes in strata like the rocks of the 
earth. One generation is born, carries its 
dinner-pail to school, raises a family and 
passes away, to be followed by another and 
another and always another, each repeating 
in its turn the same unvarying performance, 
except that as civilization advances each 
stratum of life is wider than its predecessor. 
Layer upon layer lies time's population in a 
strange and unending cycle of life and death. 
I have stood at a city street corner on a beauti- 



38 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

ful afternoon and watched the streams of 
beauty and hope and opulence flow by. And 
yet in a little while all these shall be inhabit- 
ants of another city. And in this other city 
there shall be no gorgeously gowned ladies 
pouring from the theaters nor shall the busy 
wheels of trade rattle over the pavements. 
And the dockets of the police courts shall be 
closed. It will be a strange and silent city. 
The names of its inhabitants shall be carved 
in marble and the whippoorwill shall be its 
watchman. But a hundred years from this 
moment as I write practically all the world's 
present population, the seething mass that 
now makes its laws and writes its books and 
fights its battles and sings its songs and wears 
its jewels and dances and sits shivering, will 
be gone. The population of the whole earth 
will be changed. And, 

"Somewhere in the waste 
The Shadow sits and waits for me." 

But those who are to come after us will play 
the drama as we have played it on the same 
stage and before the same footlights, only a 
little better all the time. Each generation 
and each individual 






death's kingdom and king 39 

"Struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
And then is heard no more." 

All mortal paths, including the path of glory, 
lead to the churchyard. 

"If a man die, shall he live again?" Can 
the spark of life leap the chasm of the sepul- 
cher and glow again beyond it? Is this 
earthly hour all of life? Is death death? 
Here we come to the awful ocean of the un- 
knowable. We rush to the shore and shout 
our questions of agony and hope, but we hear 
nothing in reply save the beating of the waves 
of eternity against the rocks of time. The 
most that we can do is to hope and to wait. 
Our very ignorance of another life and of the 
time when we shall enter it is designed for 
man's welfare and shows kindness in the De- 
signer. Knowledge of these would detract 
from the intensity and the happiness of the 
life that is. One life at a time. 

Ether steals away consciousness while the 
surgeon plays with his knife around one's 
vitals. Every night sleep robs us of our- 
selves only to give us back on the morrow re- 
freshed and strengthened for the new life of 
another day. The similarity between sleep 



40 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

and death seems to have appealed to all men 
everywhere. Tennyson calls sleep "Death's 
twin brother.'' In Roman mythology Sleep 
and Death were brothers and Death occupied 
an apartment in the larger hall of Sleep. 
Shakespeare causes Hamlet to meditate 
upon "that sleep of death." And through- 
out literature perhaps there is no more fre- 
quent figure of speech than the allusion to 
death as a sleep. But sleep is good, and men 
love it and court it and praise it. Coleridge 
speaks for the race and not for himself alone : 

"O sleep, it is a gentle thing, 
Beloved from pole to pole." 

And Shakespeare has even the guilty Mac- 
beth burst forth into this beautiful tribute : 

" Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, 
The death of each day's life; sore labor's bath; 
Balm of hurt minds; great nature's second course; 
Chief nourisher in life's feast." 

Of these two things so similar, sleep and 
death, the one, men love and run toward; 
the other, they flee from and dread. 

We fear that which we do not understand. 
Astronomical science has laid before us very 



death's kingdom and king 41 

clearly the laws and causes of eclipses so that 
we have no concern when the sun is darkened 
or the moon obscured. We understand the 
phenomenon. But the North American In- 
dians thought when an eclipse came that a 
dragon was eating up the obscured body, 
and quaked in terror. They did not un- 
derstand. My baby daughter runs to 
me screaming' in terror at the pant- 
ing of a locomotive. She does so because she 
does not know what a locomotive is. I un- 
derstand that it is a mighty civilizer and of 
good to man. And therefore I have no fear 
of it. Great men usually live in advance of 
their contemporaries. Consequently they 
are misunderstood, maligned, persecuted, 
crucified. When civilization moves up to 
where they stood and begins to understand 
them, it praises them and applauds them and 
crucifixion is changed to deification. If we 
understood death as well as we do sleep, pos- 
sibly we should praise it and love it even 
more. Suppose one grown to maturity 
without having experienced sleep. With 
what fear or perhaps terror would he shrink 
from its first drowsy embraces! And yet I 



42 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

much wonder if the sensation produced by 
death, as he slowly steals over the body, be 
not closely akin to the kindly trespassing of 
slumber. And for all we know there may 
be an awakening from death as sure and help- 
ful as that from sleep. Indeed, both ether 
and sleep are kinds of death, but they work 
good to man. Can death be a kind of anaes- 
thetic which the great Surgeon administers 
while he removes a soul tumor or straightens 
a crooked joint that we may have a completer 
life in another place? Or is it a sort of sleep 
that shall rest and invigorate us for a bigger 
and better to-morrow ? 

Trees and other citizens of the vegetable 
kingdom have a kind of annual death in the 
autumn. But the leaf principle persists 
through the winter and gives back the fuller 
life in the spring. Certain animals practi- 
cally suspend life during the period of hiber- 
nation. Without food or activity they re- 
tire in a state of almost lifeless torpidity and 
dream the winter away. Trances and states 
of coma during which the normal existence of 
man is indefinitely suspended are more or less 
analogous to death. I am fully sensible of 



death's kingdom and king 43 

the tremendous difference between death and 
all these phenomena. But they are all very 
suggestive as showing how far life may be 
suspended and resumed. 
We are yet but 

"An infant crying in the night, 
An infant crying for the light, 
And with no language but a cry." 

As we know more we shall fear less. The 
demons that went out of the back doors of 
yesterday will enter the front doors of to- 
morrow as gods. I have seen men clinging 
to the sterile little acre of their fathers until 
driven out by starvation or other necessity, 
only to find prosperity and wealth in the new 
place. Every one has looked tremblingly 
forward to events in his life that have after- 
ward appeared for the best. Mountains that 
look insurmountable in the distance lose their 
difficulty when approached. There is a way 
over. Children cry over their broken dolls 
and lost marbles ; but when development has 
brought them larger aims and broader view, 
their faces wear smiles where once there were 
tears. And they laugh to think they ever 



44 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

cried for such toys. The misty prospect ter- 
rifies, but the sun-crowned retrospect is 
glorious. I sometimes wonder if the greatest 
surprise of life shall not come at the moment 
of death; if eyes that turn from the last look 
of life here shall not be filled with sweeps of 
possibility and splendid vistas of development 
yonder that our poor mortality has not so 
much as dreamed of. And I sometimes sus- 
pect that looking back from the other life to 
the crowded limitations of this, we shall smile, 
as does the man over the lost marbles of his 
boyhood, that we ever dreaded death. As 
the chambered nautilus that Dr. Holmes has 
made the basis for one of the most exquisite 
poems of our literature, passing from the old 
tenement "steals the dark arch-way through" 
to a new and larger and better estate, so may 
we find in death the portal of a new life sur- 
passing this, it may be, so far as the splendors 
of noon surpass the shadows of twilight. 

Death is as natural as life and as broad. 
It must therefore have been designed by the 
great Designer of all things who gave us life. 
All of his universal laws so far as I know 
them are good. What sufficient reason have 



DEATH S KINGDOM AND KING 45 

we for supposing that death is an exception? 
Though Death be enshrouded in the twilight 
mists of the unknowable, when he comes for 
me I will go with him, since I must, trustful 
that the Hand which thus far has led me will 
lead me still and that the sleep of the grave 
may bring me the dawning of a morn eternal. 

"Why death is here I cannot say; 
I only know it is God's way; 
Since he is good, it must be best 
For us. To him I leave the rest." 

When Columbus started on his voyage of 
discovery the new world was unknown to men. 
The seas he had to cross were uncharted 
and untried. Ignorance and superstition had 
them inhabited by terrible monsters and all 
kinds of misshapen hideousness. It was sup- 
posed that in their trackless wastes the very 
laws of nature ceased to be. Columbus main- 
tained that things were not so bad as men 
believed them; that across the ocean lay 
something beneficial to the race. The wise 
pointed at their foreheads and smiled. They 
thought he was crazy. Nearly all the great 
deeds and nearly all the great dreams of hu- 
man history have been done and dreamed by 



/\C> DEA1 II AND IIS SORROW 

those whom their contemporaries have called 
"crazy" men. Id terrible dread sailors shrank 
from the undertaking! Finally a few hold 
spirits agreed to make the adventure and a 

day Was set for sailing. The friends of the 

departing voyagers followed them to the 

shore, and as the ships sailed out of port, 

wept and wailed and wrung their hands con- 
fident in the despair thai they should never 

see their own again. The ships sailed with 

the faith of their great admiral as their only 

asset. 

"Behind him l;iy the er;iy Azores, 
Ifahinri the ( Jates of I lerculcs ; 

Before him not the ghost of ihoi 

Before him, only shoreless sens." 

But die laws of nature still held, out upon 

those wild, untested w;istes; no hideous mon- 
sters appeared to devour the sailors* They 
had not sailed out of reach of CJod and his 

laws and his goodness. By and hy branches 

of trees were seen floating p;ist the ships; a 

light was seen in the distance; a little later, 

Voices; a shore; land; and a new world, 

vaster and richer and better than any even 

sunny Spain had dreamed of. 



DEATH^ KINGDOM and kin(; 47 

The seas of death arc unsailcd before us. 
Others have crossed them but they have nol 

rclurncd tO tell us the story of their exper- 
ienees. We cling to the fun and (lowers and 
sonjrs and heartaches of this life because we 
know naught ol another. We shrink from 
the trip which each one of us must make, not 
Over "the sh;inls ;ind thorns of exist riKc, 1 ' 
hut out upon these moonless expanses ol 
death. When our sailing hour shall arrive 
our friends will follow us to the shore ;ind will 
weep and grieve lest the parting he forever. 
Bill as for myself, I expect to set my sails with 
what cheer I Can, unmindful of the starless 
night and the briny spray. 

'Twilight and evening bell, 
And after that til'- dart I 

And may there he no sadness ol farewell, 

When F embark ; 
Fot tlio' from out our bourne oi Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to ee my Pilot face to faee 

When I have ( toBi the bar/ 1 

And out beyond the bar as the shores of life 
grow dim in the distance) I expect thai God's 

breath shall fill my sails with his "Onward" 



48 



DEATH AND ITS SORROW 



to the haven where he would have me go. I 
have no fear of sailing beyond his love and 
his goodness. 

And by and by I think I shall see the lights 
of another shore and again shall hear voices 
that quitted my mortal hearing, in the long 
ago. 

" Silence here — for love is silent, gazing on the 
lessening sail ; 



"Silence here — but, far beyond us, many voices 
crying, Hail I" 

I think I shall find again those who one by 
one before me left the valleys of life. I feel 
that I shall see again my own. And upon 
their brows I think I shall behold the radiance 
of a morn that shall never wear away to even- 
ing, and in them there shall be a new and 
broader and deeper and better life unending. 
For the former things shall have passed away. 
And that which we now see through a glass 
darkly shall be set before our vision face to 
face. I find myself hoping and feeling and 
dreaming and believing that the pangs of 
death here are but the birth throes of a better 
life beyond. 



death's kingdom and king 49 

"O, yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 

"That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
That not one life shall be destroy'd 
Or cast as rubbish to the void 
When God hath made the pile complete." 



CHAPTER III 

THE BAPTISM OF SORROW 

"I hold it true, whate'er befall; 
I feel it, when I sorrow most; 
'Tis better to have loved and lost, 
Than never to have loved at all." 

— Tennyson. 

Nature is ever eager to preserve a perfect 
equilibrium of facts, forces, and phenomena. 
To do this she demands a price for every gain 
and herself allows a compensation for every 
loss. This law is Emerson's "inevitable 
dualism" which "bisects nature." "Every 
excess causes a defect; every defect an ex- 
cess. Every sweet hath its sour ; every evil its 
good. For everything you have missed, you 
have gained something else; and for every- 
thing you gain, you lose something." Mid- 
night oil and incessant labor are exacted from 
the scholar, but as compensation for his toil 
Nature pays him all the pleasures and 
the glories of the life intellectual. The spur 
of necessity often drives to achievement, but 
the wiles of wealth allure to sloth and failure. 



BAPTISM OF SORROW 5 1 

There were slaves in ancient Greece who per- 
formed the menial duties of the country, 
leaving to their masters abundant oppor- 
tunity for pursuing the things of the mind. 
Slavery is bad. But out of its noxious roots 
grew the beautiful flower of Greek culture. 
The power of the tempest but strengthens the 
roots of the oak. Children shielded from 
hardship are liable to grow up dependent and 
weak; those who are compelled to overcome 
obstacles become self-reliant and resourceful. 
Storm, flame, and earthquake destroy cities, 
but greater and more beautiful ones grow out 
of their ruins. The balmy breezes and kind- 
ling sun of the south are pleasant, but they 
enervate and enfeeble, while the rigors of 
northern latitudes have written their auto- 
graph all over the book of human achieve- 
ment. John Bunyan was put into prison. 
But forth from its walls came "The Pil- 
grim's Progress." Boethius, too, felt the 
shackles of jail bars, but they gave him time 
for his "On the Consolation of Philosophy," 
a book which has given help and pleasure to 
thousands. 

Out of death, supposed to be the last and 



52 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

greatest of evils, the great Designer brings 
forth good. Soldiers have given their lives 
on the battlefield and sailors have offered 
theirs upon the altars of the untented deep. 
But they have secured in return the peace, 
prosperity and perpetuity of their country. 
The death of the patriots who fell at Lexing- 
ton and Concord and Bunker Hill was the 
birth of the world's greatest republic. Ar- 
nold of Winkelried gathered in his own side 
the spears of Sempach. But out of every 
drop of blood that flowed from his heart grew 
a plant of freedom. Those American sailors 
of our who went down in Havana harbor that 
February night with the Maine sounded the 
death knell of Spanish tyranny in the western 
hemisphere. Torches applied to the funeral 
piles of martyrs have burned the institutions 
of the persecutors and lighted up civilizations 
with their gleaming. It seems to be the order 
that the world shall rise to higher things on 
the stepping-stones of her sacrificed sons; and 
that the life-blood of men shall be required to 
dissolve the shackles that bind the bodies and 
minds and consciences of their brothers. The 
birth of a child may cost the life of the 



BAPTISM OF SORROW 53 

mother. And the most beautiful fact of his- 
tory is the Cross, where the Man of Sorrows 
sought his own death that a race of erring 
mortals might have life. 

Some of the fairest flowers in the garden 
of literature have sprung from the enriched 
soil of a broken heart. Sorrow is Nature's 
soul fertilizer. The death of Mrs. Longfel- 
low gave us the poet's " Footsteps of Angels" ; 
and the death of his child produced the beauti- 
ful " Resignation." Bryant plunged into the 
translation of Homer as a means of relief 
from grieving for the death of his wife. 
Lowell's "The First Snow Fall" grew out of 
a tear over the grave of his little daughter. 
Browning's u Prospice" is but an answer to the 
beckoning of his departed wife. Emerson 
lost a son, but literature gained a "Threnody." 
Shelley's "Adonais" grew out of the death of 
Keats, and Milton wrote his "Lycidas" to 
commemorate the death of his friend Edward 
King. Arthur Hallam fell before the noon- 
time of his life. But the sun will never set 
on the new existence that Tennyson has given 
him in the most beautiful grief poem in our 
literature, "In Memoriam." 



54 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

Out yonder on the Pacific coast stands one 
of the greatest American universities, that 
had its origin in the death of a young man. 
Disease carries away a child, the hope of some 
wealthy man's life. He is determined that 
this same malady shall not prey forever upon 
helpless children; he gives a large sum of 
money to science for the mastery of the dis- 
ease, and other children are saved. All over 
the world Grief is building churches, endow- 
ing colleges, founding orphanages and asy- 
lums, maintaining hospitals, and binding up 
the broken hearts of men. If there be no 
life after this, Death is contributing so much 
to literature, art, science, and charity; it is 
doing so much for the world's safety and 
comfort and happiness that I suspect it may 
have in it more of good than of evil. 

The deaths of our friends bring to us a 
clear view of the real issues of life. As we 
witness the final scene in some life's tragedy, 
when the play has been wholly played and 
must forever stand unchanged and unchange- 
able, the line of cleavage is clear between the 
important and the trivial, between the perma- 
nent and the transitory, the good and the bad. 



BAPTISM OF SORROW 55 

How petty do deeds and mortgages and elec- 
tion commissions and social victories and ap- 
plause and triumphs over our enemies ap- 
pear in the hour of death ! And how far at 
that time does a life of right conduct and 
character throw out its beneficent beams ! 
By the death of a friend our aims are cor- 
rected, our endeavors purified and elevated, 
and our hold upon the important and the 
abiding is made stronger. 

Death brings to us, too, a sharp sense of its 
own certainty and swiftness. Life is short. 
As others have gone, so we also shall go. If 
we would achieve anything while we are here, 
we must be about it. There is not one mo- 
ment to be lost. When I get a clear, quiet 
gaze into life I am appalled by its complexity, 
its briefness and its awfulness. Some souls 
coming in with the morning, others passing 
out into the night; some on the heights of 
hope and success, others in the lowlands of 
despair and failure. Bridal altar, divorce 
court, swaddling cloth, and shroud. Great 
railway systems spanning continents and the 
little notion-store around the corner; spray of 
the sea and clods of the hills; "skyscraper" 



$6 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

and coal mine; northern freezing and south- 
ern scorching; fraud and honesty; love and 
spite; murder and salvation. Selling shoes 
and writing deeds and rolling pills and preach- 
ing sermons and directing armies and digging 
ditches. This is Life. And out yonder a 
little way in the desert is Death, waiting to 
take all into his bottomless maw. 

Death should teach us to prize more highly 
those who remain. As the loss of one physi- 
cal sense sometimes makes others more acute, 
so, perhaps, do our affections cling more 
closely to those whom Death spares us. As 
others have gone, these will go, and we wish 
to add to the remainder of their lives as much 
of happiness as we can. 

Grief for the departed is one of the most 
beautiful of the emotions. It is the crying 
protest of the soul against separation and its 
plea for reunion in the morning of immor- 
tality. The real baptism of sorrow is the 
softening and refinement and purification of 
the individual heart. Flowers do not give 
up their sweetest perfumes until their petals 
have been torn and bruised and crushed. 
The swan was supposed to sing her sweetest 



BAPTISM OF SORROW 57 

song in the shadow of death. And the most 
precious threads in the fabric of character are 
spun at the loom of sorrow. Dante speaks 
of u the sweet worm-wood of affliction." 
George Eliot says that "trouble but deepens 
our gaze into life." And Thackeray declares 
of Henry Esmond that he "had that further 
education, which neither books nor years will 
give but which some men will get from the 
silent teaching of Adversity. She is a great 
schoolmistress as many a poor fellow knows, 
that hath held out his hand to her ferule and 
whimpered over his lesson, before her awful 
chair." But she teaches her lesson well. 
Bailey tells us that 

"the ground 
Of all great thoughts is sadness." 

Surely the majors in life's symphony are se- 
rious and perhaps touched with grief, while 
the tones of humor are among the minors. 

Death itself so serious, forces a seriousness 
upon the mind and a consideration of serious 
matters. In the burial hour of a loved one 
there is no room for neighborhood gossip and 
meaningless frivolity and empty babblings. 



58 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

Like dew before the August sun all these melt 
away and a flock of great thoughts comes for 
shelter into the mind; thoughts of God and 
his ways, of life and its mysteries and motives, 
of suffering and its alleviation, of sympathy, 
and hope, and immortality. There are few 
things really more pitiable than a mind 
capable of bigger things covered over with the 
green scum of stagnation or giving over its 
activity to subjects too little for notice. It is 
not meant to be implied that the grave is for- 
ever to banish from our lives fun and laugh- 
ter. Far from it. I believe in fun, and 
flowers, and children, and in the beauty and 
joy of the life that is. But the highest intel- 
lectual altitudes are attained only by the 
thinking of great thoughts. And this the 
schoolmistress Grief forces upon our atten- 
tion. 

It seems true that whenever one gives up 
with proper spirit any object of real value to 
himself something comes into his spiritual life 
to take the place of the object yielded and in 
compensation for it. Nature permits no man 
to suffer for the performance of a good deed. 
No one can make a contribution of money or 



BAPTISM OF SORROW 59 

time or thought or sympathy to a worthy ob- 
ject without feeling himself ennobled and 
better. "It is more blessed to give than to 
receive, " because the giver always gets back 
more than he gives. God will not permit 
himself to be any man's debtor. I think it 
is this psychological principle that underlies 
the sacrificing which has persisted through all 
religions. The gift of anything at all valu- 
able in the belief that it is worthily offered 
brings to the sacrificer a spiritual exaltation 
in compensation for his offering. Nature 
does this to preserve her balance-sheet right. 
Meal and cakes and oil and doves and blood 
of goats offered to the gods have been 
doubled and poured back into the souls of the 
donors. So there are given to every one sub- 
missively mourning over the departure of his 
own, purification and refinement of spirit. 
And this is the real baptism of sorrow. 

Men have always been proud of honorable 
scars. They are the badges of courage and 
achievement. Shakespeare has Henry the 
Fifth cheer the English soldiers before the 
battle of Agincourt with this exhortation : 



60 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

"He that shall live this day and see old age, 
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, 
And say 'To-morrow is St. Crispian.' 
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars 
And say, 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day/ " 

St. Paul boasted that he bore about in his 
body "the marks of the Lord Jesus.'' It is 
the property of physical scars to impart to 
their portion of the skin a peculiar whiteness 
and freedom from foreign particles. So do 
the scars of sorrow cleanse and whiten the 
spirit. Soul scars are the measures of life. 
No man has lived until he has loved and lost; 
until he has felt the unutterable longing for 

"the touch of a vanished hand 
And the sound of a voice that is still/' 

Every soul that would be clean and lovely 
must feel the sanctification of sorrow. It 
must have its midnight in the garden alone. 
For there is no Olivet that has not first its 
Gethsemane. 

There is an imperial word which I would 
breathe into every spirit; alike into the soul 
of the youth, who faces the east of his life 
like a young Lochinvar come out of the west 



BAPTISM OF SORROW 6 1 

or a Sir Launfal riding forth into the leafy 
June; and into the soul of the aged, who, 
leaning upon his staff, is going down into the 
western valley and the sunset. It is the magi- 
cal sesame which opens the door to happiness 
and greatness. It is the scullion of yesterday 
to be crowned king of to-morrow. This 
word is "Service." Across the centuries and 
the continents comes ringing that dictum from 
Galilee, "But he that is greatest among you 
shall be your servant." And I would add, 
"He that is happiest among you shall be your 
servant." The parable of The Good Samari- 
tan contains all the germs of good ethics, 
practical religion, happiness, and greatness of 
character. Men are great not in proportion 
to what they get out of the world, but in pro- 
portion to what they put into it. And the 
same is true of men who would be happy. 
Happiness has no separate existence of its 
own. It is found only in the companionship 
of other things. He who strives after it for 
himself chases a will-o'-the-wisp. But who- 
ever seeks it for another finds it both for that 
other and for himself. You will never find 
the magical secret of happiness until you 



62 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

learn to demand nothing for yourself, — but 
on the other hand to give all you are and have 
and can get to those about you. "But who- 
soever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, 
turn to him the other also. And if any man 
will sue thee at the law, and take away thy 
coat, let him have thy cloak also. And 
whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go 
with him twain. Give to him that asketh 
thee, and from him that would borrow of 
thee turn not thou away." When set against 
the background of the world's selfishness this 
may seem foolish philosophy. But it is not. 
It is the wisest sort of wisdom. This life of 
service I commend to all, but especially do I 
urge it upon the soul bowed down with sor- 
row. You will find the surest cure for your 
own wound in helping to heal the wounds of 
another. 

And the preparation for this life of ser- 
vice, — a life which shall bring to yourself 
happiness and greatness of character, that 
shall wipe away tears, bind up broken hearts, 
heal the soul-sick, give spiritual sight to the 
sightless, food to the hungry, and a cloak to 
the naked; that shall make the world 



BAPTISM OF SORROW 63 

brighter and better and more beautiful, — is 
the baptism of sorrow. Some of the sweetest 
characters I have known, those who have 
been the greatest benediction to my own life, 
have been cripples or invalids or persons 
whose lives have been spent in the shadow of 
a great sorrow. O ye souls bereft ! Yonder 
is one who has watched the long night 
through but has seen no light. Point out to 
him the daybreak. Another has traveled all 
day long and now at evening, footsore and 
weary, he has given up the journey and sat 
down in despair but a mile from the city, not 
knowing it is so near. Point out to him its 
spires and the way. The Infinite has some- 
thing better for us ahead. The now may be 
filled with winter but the hereafter shall be 
full of roses. The valleys are enshrouded in 
mists. But there is sunlight on the hills. 

Washinton Irving calls home "that rally- 
ing-place of the aftections." Even so are our 
cemeteries the nurseries of purer aspirations. 
The dawn of a better life for many a man 
has been the earthly sunset of some loved one. 
Has your "other self," your heart's core, been 
taken from you? A nobler self shall be 



64 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

given you now, and the lost may be found 
to-morrow. Every breeze that blows 
through our cypress trees carries away the 
dust of selfishness. And every flower that 
lifts its blushing petals over the graves of our 
departed paints upon our souls its own purity 
and whispers into our troubled spirits its 
tender message of a spring eternal beyond the 
winter of the tomb. Standing over the 
graves of your departed, forget their faults 
but build into your lives their virtues; be in- 
spired by death to holier living and to loftier 
aspirations. Defy its assaults with the hope 
of immortality. And await in patience the 
morning. 

" So long thy power has blest me, sure it still 
Will lead me on 
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent till 

The night is gone; 
And with the morn those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. ,, 



CHAPTER IV 

DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE IN LITERATURE 

As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of 
the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth 
over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall 
know it no more. 

— Bible, Psalms. 

Man wants but little; nor that little long; 
How soon must he resign his very dust, 
Which frugal nature lent him for an hour. 

— Young, Night Thoughts. 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
Await alike the inevitable hour; 
The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 

— Gray, Elegy in Country Church-yard. 

We must needs die, and are as water spilt on the 
ground, which cannot be gathered up again. 

— Bible, Samuel. 

They say the Lion and the Lizard keep 
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank 
deep ; 



66 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

And Bahram that great hunter, — the Wild Ass 
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep. 
— Omar Khayyam, Fitzgerald* s translation. 

Now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt 
seek me in the morning, but I shall not be. 

— Bible, Job. 

One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill, 
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree; 

Another came; nor yet beside the rill, 
Nor up the lawn nor at the wood, was he. 

— Gray, Elegy. 

I learned that one poor moment can suffice 
To equalize the lofty and the low. 
We sail the sea of life — a calm One finds 
And One a tempest — and, the voyage o'er, 
Death is the quiet haven of us all. 

— Wordsworth, Epitaphs. 

* * bear in mind 

How fleeting and how frail is human life. 

— Wordsworth, Epitaphs. 

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? 
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud. 
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, 
Man passes from life to his rest in the grave. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 67 

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, 
Be scattered around and together be laid; 
And the young and the old, and the low and the high, 
Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie. 

'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draft of a breath, 
From the blossom of health, to the paleness of death, 
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud — 
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? 

— William Knox, Oh, Why should the Spirit of Mortal 
be Proud? 

Yet a few days, and thee 
The all-beholding sun shall see no more y 

In all his course; * * * 

The hills, 
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between; 
The venerable woods; rivers that move 
In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
That make the meadows green; and poured round 

all, 
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — 
Are the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man. 

— Bryant, Thanatopsis. 

Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel 
of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the 
case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel 
of the Resurrection. 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Autocrat of the Breakfast 
Table. 



68 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

Like the dew on the mountain, 
Like the foam on the river, 

Like the bubble on the fountain, 
Thou art gone; and forever. 

— Sir Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake. 

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden 
bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the 
fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then 
shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the 
spirit shall return unto God who gave it. 

— Bible, Ecclesiastes. 

The gap between a King 
And me, a nameless gazer in the crowd, 
Seemed not so wide as that which stretches now 
Betwixt us two — this dead one and myself. 
Untitled, dumb and deedless, yet he is 
Transfigured by a touch from out the skies 
Until he wears, with all unconscious grace, 
The strange and sudden dignity of death. 

— Richard E. Burton. 

Yon rising Moon that looks for us again — 
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane ; 

How oft hereafter rising look for us 
Through this same garden — and for one in vain. 

— Omar Khayyam, Fitzgerald's translation. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 69 

Do not forever with thy veiled lids 

Seek for thy noble father in the dust; 

Thou know'st 'tis common ; all that lives must die, 

Passing through nature to eternity. 

— Shakespeare, Hamlet. 

Leaves have their time to fall, 

And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 

And stars to set — but all, 

Thou hast all seasons for thy own, O death. 

— Mrs. Felicia D. Hemans, Hour of Death. 

The solitary, silent, solemn scene, 
Where Caesars, heroes, peasants, hermits lie, 
Blended in dust together; where the slave 
Rests from his labors ; where th' insulting proud 
Resigns his power; the miser drops his hoard; 
Where human folly sleeps. 

— Sir Edward Dyer, Ruins of Rome. 

Whatever pangs they had are o'er; 

Whatever dark defects are past. 
What care they now, on that still shore, 

For bleak misfortune's blast? 

— W. R. Wallace. 

Vanity of vanities, the preacher saith, 
All things are vanity. The eye and ear 
Cannot be filled with what they see and hear; 






70 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

Like early dew, or lfke the sudden breath 
Of wind, or like the grass that withereth, 

Is man tossed to and fro by hope and fear; 

So little joy hath he, so little cheer 
Till all things end in the long sleep of death. 

— Christina Georgina Rossetti. 

Out, out, brief candle out! 
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
And then is heard no more: it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing. 

— Shakespeare, Macbeth, 

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty 

died, 
The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by 

my side; 
In the cold, moist earth we laid her, when the forest 

cast the leaf; 
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life 

so brief; 
Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young 

friend of ours, 
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the 

flowers. 

— Bryant, Death of the Flowers. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 7 1 

The mighty ones of earth shall lay them down 
In their low beds, and Death shall set his seal 
On Beauty's marble brow, and cold and pale, 
Bloomless and voiceless, shall the lovely ones 
Go to the 'Congregation of the dead'. 

— Casket. 
Life! we've been long together 
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear: 
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; 
Then steal away, give little warning. 

Choose thine own time; 
Say not Good-Night, but in some brighter clime 

Bid me Good-Morning. 

— Anna Letitia Barbauld. f 

Death, thou'rt a cordial old and rare: * 

Look how compounded, with what care! 
Time got his wrinkles reaping thee 
Sweet herbs from all antiquity. 

David to thy distillage went, 
Keats and Gotama excellent, 
Omar Khayyam and Chaucer bright, 
And Shakespeare for a King-delight. 

Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt; 
Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt; 
'Tis thy rich stirrup-cup to me ; 
I'll drink it down right smilingly. 

— Sidney Lanier, The Stirrup-cup. 



72 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

The garlands wither on your brow, 

Then boast no more your mighty deeds ; 
Upon Death's purple altar now 
See where the victor-victim bleeds. 
Your heads must come 
To the cold tomb; 
Only the actions of the just 
Smell sweet and blossom in their dust. 

— James Shirley. 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid, 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial lire; 

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd, 
Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre. 

— Gray, Elegy. 

Dear, beauteous Death! the jewel of the Just, 
Shining nowhere, but in the dark; 

What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, 
Could man outlook that mark. 

— Henry Vaughan. 

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of childhood: 
Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, 
Seeking to find the old familiar faces. 
For some they have died, and some they have left 

me, 
And some are taken from me ; all are departed ; 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 

— Charles Lamb. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 73 

And the width of the waters, the hush 

Of the gray expanse where he floats, 

Freshening its current and spotted with foam 

As it draws to the Ocean, may strike 

Peace to the Soul of the man on its breast — 

As the pale waste widens around him, 

As the banks fade dimmer away, 

As the stars come out, and the night-wind 

Brings up the stream 

Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea. 

— Matthew Arnold, The Future. 

So when that night I pray'd 

To God, I wept, and said: 

"Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath, 

Not vexing thee in death, 

And thou rememberest of what toys 

We made our joys, 

How weakly understood, 

Thy great commanded good, 

Then, fatherly not less 

Than I, whom thou hast moulded from the clay, 

Thou'lt leave thy wrath and say, 

I will be sorry for their childishness." 

Coventry Patmore. 

So when the Angel of the darker Drink 
At last shall find you by the river brink, 

And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul 
Forth to your lips to quaff — you shall not shrink. 

— Omar Khayyam. 



74 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

If a man looks at it (death) in itself, he will 
then consider it to be nothing else than an operation 
of nature: and if any one is afraid of an operation 
of nature, he is a child. 

— Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 

Rest, therefore, thou, 
Whose early guidance trained my infant steps — 
Rest, in the bosom of God, till the brief sleep 
Of death is over, and a happier life 
Shall dawn to waken thing insensible dust. 

— Bryant, Hymn to Death. 

I am: how little more I know! 
Whence came I? whither do I go? 
A centered self, which feels and is; 
A cry between the silences; 
A shadow-birth of clouds at strife 
With sunshine on the hills of life; 
A shaft from Nature's quiver cast 
Into the Future from the Past; 
Between the cradle and the shroud, 
A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud. 

— Whittier, Questions of Life. 

This present life of men on earth, O King, in 
comparison with that time which is unknown to us, 
seems to me thus: as if you were sitting at a ban- 
quet with your rulers and thanes in the winter-time 
and a fire were kindled and the hall warmed, and 
it were raining and snowing and storming with- 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 75 

out; and a sparrow should suddenly fly through 
the hall, coming in at one door and going out at 
another. What time he is within, he is not op- 
pressed by the storm of the winter. But that is 
but the twinkling of an eye. For he came out of 
the winter and soon shall return into the winter 
again. So does this life of men manifest itself for 
a while. What went before or what shall come 
after we do not know. 

From the Anglo-Saxon Version of 

Bede's Ecclestiastical History. 
(Authors translation of the passage.) 

This world death's region is: the other life's; 
And here, it should be one of our first strifes 
So to front death, as men might judge us past it; 
For good men but see death, the wicked taste it. 

— Ben Jonson. 

O, sweet and strange it seems to me, that ere this 

day is done, 
The voice that now is speaking may be beyond the 

sun — 
Forever and forever with those just souls and true ; 
And what is life, that we should moan? Why 

make we such ado? 

— Tennyson. 

Men fear death as children fear to go in the 
dark; and as that natural fear in children is in- 
creased with tales, so is the other. I have often 
thought upon death, and I find it the least of all 



76 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

evils. I might say much of the commodities that 
death can sell a man; but briefly, death is a friend 
of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him, 
is not at home. 

— Francis Bacon, Essays, 

Why all this toil for triumphs of an hour? 
What tho' we wade in wealth or soar in fame ? 
Earth's highest station ends in "Here he lies;" 
And "dust to dust" concludes her noblest song. 

— Young, Night Thoughts. 

Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
Was not spoken of the soul. 

— Longfellow, Psalm of Life. 

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, 

It seems most strange to me that men should fear; 

Seeing that death, a necessary end, 

Will come, when it will come. 

— Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. 

Affliction is the good man's shining scene; 

Prosperity conceals his brightest ray: 

As night to stars, woe lustre gives to man. 

— Young, Night Thoughts. 

Grief is a tattered tent 
Wherethrough God's light doth shine. 

—Lucy Larcom. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 77 

Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd, 
Doth burn the heart to cinders. 

— Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus. 

Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sad- 
ness of the countenance the heart is made better. 

— Bible, Ecclesiastes. 

The path of sorrow, and that path alone, 
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown; 
No traveller ever reached that blest abode, 
Who found not thorns and briars in his road. 

— William Cowper. 

Let us be patient ! These severe afflictions 

Not from the ground arise, 
But oftentimes celestial benedictions 

Assume this dark disguise. 

— Longfellow, Resignation. 

For our light affliction, w^hich is but for a mo- 
ment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory. 

— Bible, Corinthians. 

O Time! the beautifier of the dead, 
Adorner of the ruin, comforter 
And only healer w-hen the heart hath bled — 
Time! the corrector where our judgments err 
The test of truth, love, — sole philosopher! 

— Byron, Childe Harold. 



78 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

Catch ! then, O ! catch, the transient hour ; 

Improve each moment as it flies; 
Life's a short summer — man a flower — 

He dies — alas! how soon he dies. 

— Dr. Johnson. 

That very law which moulds a tear, 
And bids it trickle from its source, 

That law preserves the earth a sphere, 
And guides the planets in their course. 

— Rogers. 

He will swallow up death in victory; and the 
Lord God will wipe away tears, from off all faces. 

— Bible, Isaiah. 

If thou hast ever felt that all on earth 
Is transient and unstable, that the hopes 
Which man reposes on his brother man 
Are but broken reeds; if thou hast seen 
That life itself "is but a vapor," sprung 
From time's upheaving ocean, decked, perhaps, 
With here and there a rainbow, but full soon 
To be dissolved and mingled with the vast 
And fathomless expanse that rolls its waves 
On every side around thee; if thy heart 
Has deeply felt all this, and thus has learned 
That earth has no security, then go 
And place thy trust in God. 

— Casket. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 79 

We paused, as if from that bright shore 
Beckoned our dear ones gone before; 
And still our beating hearts to hear 
The voices lost to mortal ear. 

"So," prayed we, "when our feet draw near 
The river, dark with mortal fear, 
And the night cometh chill with dew, 
O, Father! let thy light break through! 
And in thy beckoning angels know 
The dear ones whom we loved below." 

— Whittier, The River Path, 

And the stately ships go on 

To the haven under the hill ; 
But O for the touch of a vanished hand, 

And the sound of a voice that is still ! 

— Tennyson, Break, Break, Break. 

Oft, in the stilly night, 

Ere slumber's chain has bound me 
Fond Memory brings the light 
Of other days around me; 
The smiles, the tears, 
Of boyhood's years, 
The words of love then spoken; 
The eyes that shone 
Now dimmed and gone, 
The cheerful hearts now broken! 

— Thomas Moore. 



80 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

Mysterious Night! * * 

Who could have guessed such darkness lay concealed 
Within thy beams, O Sun? or who divined 
When bud and flower and insect lay revealed 
Thou to such countless worlds hadst made us blind ? 
Why should we then shun Death with anxious 

strife ? 
If light conceals so much, wherefore not life? 

— Joseph Blanco White. 

Forgive my grief for one removed, 
Thy creature, whom I found so fair, 
I trust he lives in thee, and there 

I find him worthier to be loved. 

— Tennyson, In Memoriam. 

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from 
which we refuse to be divorced. Every other 
wound we seek to heal, every other affliction to for- 
get; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep 
open, this affliction we cherish and brood over in soli- 
tude. * * * No, the love which survives the 
tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If 
it has its woes, it has likewise its delights ; and when 
the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the 
gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish 
and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of 
all that we most loved is softened away into pensive 
meditation on all that it was in the days of its love- 
liness, who would root out such a sorrow from the 
heart? Oh, the grave! the grave! It buries every 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 8 I 

error, covers every defect, extinguishes every resent- 
ment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but 
fond regrets and tender recollections. 

— Washington Irving, Sketch Book. 

But time hath power to soften all regrets, 

And prayer and thought can bring to worst distress 

Due resignation. 

— Wordsworth, The Excursion. 

Across her soul a heavy sorrow swept, 
As tidal waves sweep sometimes o'er the land, 
Leaving her face, when back it ebbed and crept, 
Tranquil and purified, like tide-washed sand. 

— Bessie Chandler. 

Away! we know that tears are vain, 
That Death nor heeds nor hears distress; 

Will this unteach us to complain? 
Or make one mourner weep the less? 
And thou, who tell'st me to forget, 
Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet. 

— Byron. 

Come away: for Life and Thought 

Here no longer dwell; 
But in a city glorious — 
A great and distant city — have bought 

A mansion incorruptible. 
Would they could have staid with us! 

— Tennyson. 



N 



82 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

There's a magical Isle up the river of Time, 

Where the softest of airs are playing; 
There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime, 
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime, 
And the Junes with the roses are staying. 

And the name of this Isle is the Long Ago. 

And we bury our treasures there: 
There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow — 
There are heaps of dust, but we loved them so ! 

There are trinkets and tresses of hair. 

— Benjamin Franklin Taylor. 

When our hearts shall feel a sting 
From ill we meet or good we miss, 

May touches of his memory bring 
Fond healing, like a mother's kiss. 

— Wordsworth, The Excursion. 

Oh, when the room grows slowly dim, 
And life's last oil is nearly spent, 

One gush of light these eyes will brim, 
Only to think she came and went. 

— Lowell. 

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee 
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; 
For those whom thou thinkest thou dost overthrow 
Die not, poor Death ; nor yet canst thou kill me. 
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be, 
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must 
flow; 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 83 

And soonest our best men with thee do go, — 

Rest of their bones and soul's delivery! 

Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate 

men, 
And dost with poison, war and sickness dwell; 
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well 
And better, than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou 

then? 
One short sleep past, we wake eternally, 
And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt 

die! 

— John Donne. 

Dear as remembered kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned 
On lips that are for others; deep as love, 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; 
O Death in Life, the days that are no more. 

— Tennyson, Princess. 

The ground 
Of all great thoughts is sadness. 

— Bailey. 

Three treasures, — love and light 
And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath; 
And three firm friends, more sure than day or night, 
Himself, his Maker, and the Angel Death. 

— Coleridge. 



84 DEATH and its sorrow 

Man that is horn of a womnn is of few days, and 
full of trouble, lie eomctli forth like a flower and 
is cut down: he flccth also as a shadow, and con- 
tinued not. 

BlBLBj Job. 

For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that 
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth 
away. 

— Bible, James. 

Let Kate do her worst; there are relies of joy, 
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy; 
And which conic in the nighttime of sorrow and 

care, 
To bring back the features that joy used to wear; 
Long, long be my heart with such memories filled; 
Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled, 
You may brenk, you may ruin the vase if you will, 
Hut the scent of the roses will hang round it still. 

— Thomas Moore. 

Strange ^lory streams through life's wild rents, 
And through the open door of death 
We see the heaven that beckoneth 
To the beloved tfointf hence. 

— Gerald Massey. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 85 

Rest not I Life is sweeping by. 
Go and dare before you die; 
Something mighty and sublime 

Leave behind tO conquer time! 

Glorious 'tis to live for aye, 

When these forms have passed away. 

— OOBTBl (Anonymous Translation). 

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 

death, where is thy Sting? grave, where is thy 
victory? 

— Bihi.f:, Corinthians. 

There is no death — the thing that we call death 
Is but another, sadder name tor life, 
Which is itself an insufficient name, 
Paint recognition of that unknown life — 
That Power whose shadow is the Universe. 

— R. II. Stoddard. 

1 like that ancient Saxon phrase which calls 
The burial ground Gods Acre! It is just; 

It consecrates each grave within its walls, 
And breathes a benison o'er the deeping dust. 

Into its furrows shall we all be cast, 

In the sure faith, that we shall rise again 

At the ^reat harvest, when the archangel's blast 
Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and ^rain. 

— LONGTELLOW. 



86 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

Death is the gate of life. 

— Bailey, Festus. 

Whoso laments, that we must doff this garb 
Of frail mortality, thenceforth to live 
Immortally above; he hath not seen 
The sweet refreshing of that heavenly shower. 

— Dante, Gary's translation. 

Thou Pow'r Supreme, whose mighty scheme, 

These woes of mine fulfill, 
Here, firm I rest, they must be best, 

Because they are thy will; 
Then all I want (O, do Thou grant 

This one request of mine!) 
Since to enjoy thou dost deny, 

Assist me to resign. 

—Burns. 

But wherefore weep? Her matchless spirit soars 
Beyond where splendid shines the orb of day; 

And weeping angels lead her to those bowers 
Where endless pleasures virtue's deeds repay. 

And shall presumptuous mortals Heaven arraign, 
And madly godlike Providence accuse? 

Ah ! No, far fly from me attempts so vain ; — 
I'll ne'er submission to my God refuse. 

— Byron. 

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be 
comforted. 

— Bible. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 87 

Yet 'twill only be a sleep: 
When, with songs and dewy light, 
Morning blossoms out of Night, 
She will open her blue eyes 
'Neath the palms of paradise, 
While we foolish ones shall weep. 

— Edward Rowland Sill. 

The storms of wintry time will quickly pass 
And one unbounded spring encircle all. 

— Thomson. Seasons. 

O, the bitterness of parting cannot be done away 
Till I meet my darlings walking where their feet 

can never stray ; 
When I no more am drifted upon the surging tide, 
But with them safely landed upon the river side: 
Be patient, heart, while waiting to see their shining 

way, 
For the little feet in the golden street can never go 

astray. 

— Anonymous. 

For when the morn came dim and sad, 

And chill with early showers, 
Her quiet eye-lids closed ; — she had 

Another morn than ours. 

— Hood. 

And God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes: and there shall be no more death, neither sor- 



88 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

row, nor crying, neither shall there be any more 
pain: for the former things are passed away. 

— Bible, Revelations. 

Death is the dullness that precedes the dawn; 
We shudder for a moment, then awake 
In the broad sunshine of the other life. 

— Longfellow, Michael Angelo. 



V 



Death is delightful. Death is dawn, 
The waking from a weary night 
Of fevers into truth and light. 

— Joaquin Miller, Even So. 

I hear, from the depths of the river, 
Sweet words that my spirit thrill; 

We are parted, but not forever: 
We are living and loving still! 

And my soul no more is lonely 
Nor throbs with a sense of pain, 

For the loved, who were once mine only, 
I know will be mine again. 

— Anonymous. 

My friends, I hope you do not call that death. 
That is an autumnal sunset. That is a crystalline 
river pouring into a crystal sea. That is the solo 
of human life overpowered by the Hallelujah 
chorus. That is a queen's coronation. That is 
Heaven. 

— T. DeWitt Talmage. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 89 

Dread Omnipotence alone 

Can heal the wound he gave — 
Can point the brimful, grief-worn eyes 

To scenes beyond the grave. 

— Burns. 

I straight obey'd: and with mine eye return'd 

Through all the seven spheres: and saw this globe 

So pitiful of semblance, that perforce 

It moved my smiles : and him in truth I hold 

For wisest, who esteems it least; whose thoughts 

Elsew T here are fix'd, him call and best. 

— Dante (Cary's translation). 

When obstacles and trials seem 

Like prison walls to be 
I do the little I can do, 

And leave the rest to Thee. 

— Frederick William Faber. 

Life mocks the idle hate 
Of his arch-enemy Death — Yea seats himself 
Upon the tyrant's throne — the Sepulcher, 
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe 
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth 
From thine ow T n bosom, and shall have no end. 

— Bryant. 

Why shouldst thou fear the beautiful angel, Death ? 

Who waits thee at the portal of the skies, 
Ready to kiss away thy struggling breath, 

Ready with gentle hand to close thine eyes? 



90 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

O, what were life if life were all? Thine eyes, 
Are blinded by their tears, or thou wouldst see 

Thy treasures wait thee in the far-off skies, 

And Death, thy friend, will give them all to thee. 

— Adelaide Anne Procter. 

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of 
his saints. 

— Bible, Psalms. 

The Night is mother of the Day, 
The Winter of the Spring, 
And ever upon old Decay 
The greenest mosses cling. 
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, 
Through showers the sunbeams fall ; 
For God, who loveth all His works, 
Has left His Hope with all ! 

— Whittier, Dream of Summer. 

Never here, forever there! 
Where all parting, pain and care, 
And death and time shall disappear, 
Forever there, but never here! 

— Longfellow, The Old Clock on the Stairs. 

I shall know the loved who have gone before, 
And joyfully sweet will the meeting be, 

When over the river, the peaceful river, 
The angel of death shall carry me. 

— Nancy A. W. Priest. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 9 1 

And parted thus they rest, who played 

Beneath the same green tree; 
Whose voices mingled as they prayed 

Around one parent knee! 

They that with smiles lit up the hall, 
And cheered with song the hearth — 

Alas! for love, if thou wert all, 
And naught beyond, O earth! 

— Mrs. Hemans. 

The light of smiles shall fill again 
The lids that overflow with tears; 

And weary hours of woe and pain 
Are promises of happier years. 

And thou, who o'er thy friend's low bier, 

Dost shed the bitter drops like rain, 
Hope that a brighter, happier sphere 
Will give him to thy arms again. 

For God hath marked each sorrowing day 

And numbered every secret tear, 
And heaven's long age of bliss shall pay 
For all his children suffer here. 

— Bryant. 

The door of death is made of gold, 
That mortal eyes cannot behold: 
But, when the mortal eyes are closed, 
And cold and pale the limbs reposed, 
The soul awakes, and wondering sees 



92 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

In her mild hand, the golden keys. 
The grave is Heaven's golden gate, 
And rich and poor around it wait. 

—William Blake. 

I know it is over, over 

I know it is over at last! 
Down sail! the sheathed anchor uncover 
For the stress of the voyage has passed ! 
Life, like a tempest of ocean, 

Hath outbreathed its ultimate blast; 
There's but a faint sobbing seaward, 
While the calm of the tide deepens leeward ; 
And behold! like the welcoming quiver 
Of heart-pulses throbbed through the river, 

Those lights in the harbor at last, 

The heavenly harbor at last! 

— Paul Hamilton Hayne. 

Death takes us by surprise, 
And stays our hurrying feet; 

The great design unfinished lies 
Our lives are incomplete. 

— Longfellow. 

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see 
that there is great reason to hope that death is a 
good ; for one of two things — either death is a state 
of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men 
say, there is a change and migration of the soul from 
this world to another. Now, if death is like this, 
(nothingness) I say that to die is gain; for eternity 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 93 

is then only a single night. But if death is the 
journey to another place, and there, as men say, all 
the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, 
can be greater than this? Wherefore, O judges, be 
of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty 
that no evil can happen to a good man, either in 
life or after death. The hour of departure has 
arrived, and we go our ways — I to die and you to 
live. Which is better God only knows. 

— Socrates. 

Weep not for death, 

'Tis but a fever stilled, 
A pain suppressed, — a fear at rest, 
A solemn hope fulfilled. 
The moonshine on the slumbering deep 

Is scarcely calmer. Wherefore weep? 

Weep not for death! 

The fount of tears is sealed, 
Who knows how bright the inward light 

To those closed eyes' revealed ; 
Who knows what holy love may fill, 

The heart that seems so cold and still. 

— Anonymous. 

Ah Christ, that it were possible 

For one short hour to see 

The souls we loved, that they might tell us 

What and where they be. 

— Tennyson, Maud. 



/ 



94 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

Death lies on her, like an untimely frost 
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. 

— Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 

The world recedes; it disappears! 
Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears 
With sounds seraphic ring. 
Lend, lend your wings ! I mount ! I fly ! 

— Pope, Dying Christian to His Soul. 

Friend after friend departs! 
Who hath not lost a friend? 
There is no union here of hearts 
That finds not here an end; 
Were this frail world our only rest, 
Living or dying, none were blest. 

— James Montgomery, Friends. 

Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, 
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by? 

The transient pleasures as a vision seem, 
And yet we think the greatest pain's to die. 

How strange it is that man on earth should roam, 
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake 

His rugged path; nor dare to view alone 
His future doom which is but to awake. 

— Keats, On Death. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 95 

Sometime when all life's lessons have been learned, 

And sun and stars forevermore have set, 
The things which our weak judgment here have 
spurned, 
The things o'er which we grieved with lashes wet, 
Will flash before us, out of life's dark night, 
As stars shine more in deeper tints of blue, 
And we shall see how all God's plans were right, 
And how what seemed reproof was love most 
true. 

— May Riley Smith. 

In the rippling trees I hear 
Flowing waves and dipping oars; 
And beloved voices near, 
Seem to steal from fading shores. 

— Harriet McEwen Kimball. 

Another hand is beckoning us, 

Another call is given; 
And glows once more with Angel-steps 

The path which reaches Heaven. 

There seems a shadow on the day, 

Her smile no longer cheers; 
A dimness on the stars of night, 

Like eyes that look through tears. 

Alone unto our Father's will 

One thought hath reconciled; 
That He w^hose love exceedeth ours 

Hath taken home His child. 



g6 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

Fold her, O Father, in thine arms, 

And let her henceforth be 
A messenger of love between 

Our human hearts and thee. 

— Whittier. 

O, sweet be thy sleep in the land of the grave, 

My dear little angel forever! 
Forever? O no! let not man be a slave, 

His hopes from existence to sever. 

Though cold be the clay, where thou pillow'st thy 
head 

In the dark, silent mansions of sorrow, 
The spring shall return to thy low, narrow bed, 

Like the beam of the day-star to-morrow. 

— Burns. 

Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from 
henceforth : Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest 
from their labors ; and their works do follow them. 

— Bible, Revelations. 

Death stands above me, whispering low 

I know not what into my ear: 
Of his strange language all I know 

Is, there is not a word of fear. 

—Walter Savage Landor. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 97 

Our share of night to bear, 

Our share of morning, 
Our blank in bliss to fill, 

Our blank in scorning. 

Here a star, and there a star, 

Some lose their way. 
Here a mist, and there a mist, 

Afterwards — day ! 

— Emily Dickinson. 

My hopes are with the Dead; anon 
My place with them will be, 

And I with them shall travel on 
Through all futurity. 

— Robert Southey. 

God lent him and takes him, you sigh, 
Nay, there let me break with your pain: 

God's generous in giving, say I, 

And the thing which he gives, I deny 
That he ever can take back again. 

So look up, friends! you who indeed 

Have possessed in your house a sweet piece 

Of the heaven which men strive for, must need 

Be more earnest than others are speed 

Where they loiter, persist where they cease. 



98 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

You know how one angel smiles there, — 

Then courage. 'Tis easy for you 
To be drawn by a single gold hair 
Of that curl, from earth's storm and despair 

To the safe place above us, Adieu. 

— Mrs. Browning. 

The mourner dreamt of Heaven! 

Before his eyes, so long with sorrow dim, 
A glorious sheen, like lengthened lightning blazed; 
And from the clouds one face looked down on 
him, 
Whose beauty thrilled his veins, and as he gazed 
He knew he gazed on Heaven! 

— Anonymous. 

Eternal hope! when yonder spheres sublime 
Pealed their first notes to sound the march of time, 
Thy joyous youth began — but not to fade, 
When all the sister planets have decayed, 
When wrapped in fire the realms of ether glow, 
And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below, 
Thou, undismayed, shalt o'er the ruins smile, 
And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile. 

— Campbell. 

Nor there should cypress weave its gloom ; 
O not by graves should tears be shed ; 
No! — gratulations for the dead, 

And roses for the tomb ! 

— W. R. Wallace. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 99 

Do something for somebody gladly, 

'Twill sweeten your every care; 
In sharing the sorrows of others 

Your own are less hard to bear. 
Do something for somebody always, 

Whatever may be your creed; 
There's nothing on earth can help you 

So much as doing a kindly deed. 

— Venie Whitney. 

A sacred burden is this life we bear; 
Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, 
Stand up, and walk beneath it steadfastly. 
Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, 
But onward, upward, till the goal ye win, 

— Frances Anne Kemble. 

Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 

And tossed by storm and flood, 
To one fixed trust my spirit clings; 

I know that God is good! 

I long for household voices gone, 
For vanished smiles I long, V 

But God hath led my dear ones on, 
And He can do no wrong. 

I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 

His mercy underlies. 



I OO DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

And so beside the Silent Sea 

I wait the muffled oar; 
No harm from Him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore. 

I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 

I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care. 

— Whittier, The Eternal Goodness. 

The poor, oppressed, honest man 
Had never, sure, been born, 
Had there not been some recompense 
To comfort those that mourn. 

— Burns. 

And they who are wandering on the earth, 
How glad will the meeting be 

Of that widely scattered household band 
In the land beyond the sea. 

— Miss M. Remick. 

In the path of duty grows many a thorn, 
And bleak is the scorn of a selfish world ; 
But there never was night without its morn, 
And after the tempest the clouds are furled ; 
For over all spreadeth the bright blue sky, 
And we trust in our God, who is always nigh. 

—William Winter. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE IOI 

Learn the mystery of progression duly: 
Do not call each glorious change decay; 

But know we only hold our treasures truly, 
When it seems as if they passed away. 

— Adelaide Anne Procter. 

Hast thou not glimpses, in the twilight here, 

Of mountains where immortal morn prevails? 
Comes there not through the silence, to thine ear, 

A gentle rustling of the morning gales? 
A murmur, wafted from that glorious shore, 

Of streams that water banks forever fair; 
And voices of the loved ones gone before, 

More musical in that celestial air? 

— Bryant. 

So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still 

Will lead me on, 
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 

The night is gone; 
And with the morn those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. 

— John Henry Newman, Lead, Kindly Light. 

He who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain 
flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright. 

— Bryant, To a IVaterfowL 



102 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

But, as I gazed e'en through the mist of tears, 
There shone a clearer light; and now I know 
That Death is but the flaring of the torch, 
When angels bear it from its house of clay 
Forth to the outer air, where it shall burn 
Free and with undiminished radiance evermore. 
And though the world is lone without thee, 
And from day to day thy presence more we miss, 
Yet still the time is swiftly drawing nigh, 
When we must tread the dim and narrow path; 
And blessed they who groping in its gloom, 
Though sightless still can feel the clasping hands 
Of them that went before, and know the way. 

— Mrs. A. M. Butterfield. 

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, 
Leads by the hand her little child to bed, 
Half willing, half reluctant to be led, 

And leaves his broken playthings on the floor, 

Still gazing at them through the open door, 
Nor wholly reassured and comforted 
By promises of others in their stead 

Which though more splendid, may not please him 
more ; 

So Nature deals with us, and takes away 
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand 
Leads us to rest so gently that we go 
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, 
Being too full of sleep to understand 
How far the unknown transcends the what we 
know! 

— Longfellow. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE IO3 

Home is everywhere to thee, 

Who canst thine own dwelling be; 

Yea, though ruthless Death assail thee, 

Still thy lodging will not fail thee: 

Still thy Soul's thine own; and she 

To a House removed shall be; 

An eternal House above, 

Waird and roof'd and pav'd with Love. 

— Joseph Beaumont. 

But this we know: Our loved and dead, if they 

should come this day, 
Should ask us, "What is life?" not one of us could 

say. 
Life is a Mystery as deep as ever death can be; 
Yet, oh! how sweet it is to us this life we live and 

see! 

Then might they say, these vanished ones — and 

blessed is the thought: 
"So death is sweet to us beloved! though we may 

tell you naught. 
We may not tell it to the quick, this mystery of 

death ; 
Ye may not tell us, if ye would, the mystery of 

breath;" 

The child who enters life comes not with knowledge 
or intent; 



104 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

So those who enter death must go as little children 
sent. 

Nothing is known ! But I believe that God is over- 
head ; 

And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead. 

— Mary Mapes Dodge. 

I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at hand the angels are: 

And when the sunset gates unbar, 
Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 

And white against the evening star, 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 

— Whittier. 

Fair hope is dead, and light 

Is quenched in night. 
What sound can break the silence of despair? 
O doubting heart! 
The sky is overcast, 
Yet stars shall rise at last, 
Brighter, for darkness past, 
And angels' silver voices stir the air. 

— Adelaide Anne Procter. 

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 
Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die; 

And thou hast made him: thou art just. 

— Tennyson, In Memoriam. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 105 

Hope, like the glimmering taper's light, 

Illumes and cheers our way ; 
And still, as darker grows the night, 

Emits a brighter ray. 

. — Oliver Goldsmith, The Captivity. 

So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan that moves 
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

— Bryant, Thanatopsis. 



And friends, dear friends, when it shall be 
That this low breath is gone from me, 

And round my bier ye come to weep, 
Let one most loving of you all, 
Say "Not a tear must o'er her fall! 

He giveth His beloved sleep.' ' 

— Mrs. Browning, He Giveth His Beloved Sleep. 

Who knows the inscrutable design? 

Blessed be He who took and gave. 
Why should your mother, Charles, not mine, 

Be weeping at her darling's grave? 



j 



106 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

We bow to Heaven, that wilPd it so, 
That darkly rules the fate of all, 

That sends the respite or the blow, 
That's free to give or to recall. 

— Thackeray, The End of the Play. 

I would that thus when I shall see 
The hour of death draw near to me, 
Hope, blossoming within my heart, 
May look to heaven as I depart. 

— Bryant. 

Comfort thee, O thou mourner, yet awhile! 
Again shall Elia's smile 

Refresh thy heart, whose heart can ache no more. 
What is it we deplore? 

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He may have left the lowly walks of men; 
Left them he has; what then? 

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Behold him! from the region of the blest 
He speaks: he bids thee rest. 

— Walter Savage Landor. 

Abide with me! fast falls the eventide; 
The darkness deepens: Lord, with me abide! 
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, 
Help of the helpless, O abide with me. 

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day; 
Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away: 
Change and decay in all around I see; 
O Thou, who changest not, abide with me. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE IOy 

Hold Thou Thy Cross before my closing eyes; 
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies; 
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows 

flee: 
In life and death, O Lord, abide with me. 

— Henry Francis Lyte. 

That death seems but a covered way 

Which opens into light, 
Wherein no blinded child can stray 

Beyond the Father's sight; — 

That care and trial seem at last, 
Through Memory's sunset air, 

Like mountain-ranges overpast 
In purple distance fair. 

— Whittier. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou are 
with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 

— Bible, Psalms. 

Beyond the years the answer lies, 
Beyond where brood the grieving skies 

And Night drops tears. 
Where Faith rod-chastened smiles to rise 

And doff its fears, 
And carping Sorrow pines and dies — 

Beyond the years. 



io8 



DEATH AND ITS SORROW 



Beyond the years the prayer for rest 
Shall beat no more within the breast; 

The darkness clears, 
And Morn perched on the mountain's crest 

Her form up rears — 
The day that is to come is best, 

Beyond the years. 

Beyond the years the soul shall find 
That endless peace for which it pined, 

For light appears, 
And to the eyes that still were blind 

With blood and tears, 
Their sight shall come all unconfined 

Beyond the years. 

— Paul Laurence Dunbar. 

God has his plans, and what if we 
With our sight be too blind to see 
Their full fruition ; cannot he, 
Who made it, solve the mystery? 
One whom we loved has fall'n asleep, 
Not died; although her calm be deep, 
Some new, unknown, and strange surprise 
In Heaven holds enrapt her eyes. 



The house is dust, the voice is dumb, 
But through undying years to come, 
The spark that glowed within her soul 
Shall light our footsteps' to the goal. 
She went her way ; but oh, she trod 
The path that led her straight to God. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE IO9 

Such lives as this put death to scorn; 
They lose our day to find God's morn. 

— Paul Laurence Dunbar. 

The work was done — 
How soon my Lucy's race was run ! 

She died, and left to me 
This heath, this calm and quiet scene; 
The memory of what has been, 

And never more will be. 

Wordsworth, Lucy. 

Then be content, poor heart! 
God's plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold: 
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart; 

Time will reveal the calyxes of gold. 
And if through patient toil we reach the land 

Where tired feet with sandals loose may rest, 
When we shall clearly see and understand 

I think that we will say "God knows the best." 

— May Riley Smith. 

CROSSING THE BAR 

Sunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 

When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 

Turns again home. 



1 10 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

Twilight and evening bell, 

And after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell, 

When I embark! 

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have crost the bar. 

— Tennyson. 

THE FIRST SNOW FALL 

The snow had begun in the gloaming, 

And busily all the night 
Had been heaping field and highway 

With a silence deep and white. 

Every pine and fir and hemlock 
Wore ermine too dear for an earl, 

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree 
Was ridged inch deep with pearl. 

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara 
Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, 

The stiff rails softened to swan's-down, 
And still fluttered down the snow. 

I stood and watched by the window 

The noiseless work of the sky, 
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, 

Like brown leaves whirling by. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE III 

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn 

Where a little headstone stood; 
How the flakes were folding it gently, 

As did robins the babes in the wood. 

Up spoke our own little Mabel 

Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?" 

And I told of the good All-father 
Who cares for us here below. 

Again I looked at the snow-fall, 

And thought of the leaden sky 
That arched o'er our first great sorrow, 

When the mound was heaped so high. 

I remembered the gradual patience 
That fell from that cloud like snow, 

Flake by flake, healing and hiding 
The scar that renewed our woe. 

And again to the child I whispered, 

"The snow that husheth all, 
Darling, the merciful Father 

Alone can make it fall!" 

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her; 

And she, kissing back, could not know 
That my kiss was given to her sister, 

Folded close under deepening snow. 

— Lowell. 



112 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

RESIGNATION 

There is no flock, however watched and tended, 

But one dead lamb is there ! 
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 

But has one vacant chair! 

The air is full of farewells to the dying, 

And mournings for the dead ; 
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, 

Will not be comforted ! 

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions 

Not from the ground arise, 
But often times celestial benedictions 

Assume this dark disguise. 

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; 

Amid these earthly damps 
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers 

May be heaven's distant lamps. 

There is no Death! what seems so is transition; 

This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 

Whose portal we call Death. 

She is not dead, — the child of our affection, — 

But gone unto that school 
Where she no longer needs our poor protection, 

And Christ himself doth rule. 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE II3 

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, 

By guardian angels led, 
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, 

She lives, whom we call dead. 

Day after day we think what she is doing 

In those bright realms of air; 
Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, 

Behold her grown more fair. 

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken 

The bond which nature gives, 
Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, 

May reach her where she lives. 

Not as a child shall we again behold her; 

For when with raptures wild 
In our embrace we again enfold her, 

She will not be a child ; 

But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, 

Clothed with celestial grace; 
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion 

Shall we behold her face. 

And though at times impetuous with emotion 

And anguish long suppressed, 
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean, 

That cannot be at rest, — 
8 



1 14 DEATH AND ITS SORROW 

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling 

We may not wholly stay; 
By silence sanctifying, not concealing, 

The grief that must have way. 

— Longfellow. 

PROSPICE 

Fear death? — to feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place, 
The power of the night, the press of the storm, 

The post of the foe; 
Where he stands, the Arch Foe in a visible form, 

Yet the strong man must go: 
For the journey is done and the summit attained, 

And the barriers fall, 
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, 

The reward of it all. 
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and fore- 
bore, 

And bade me creep past. 
No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers 

The heroes of old, 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, 

The black minute's at end, 



DEATH, SORROW AND HOPE 115 

And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 

Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, 

Then a light, then thy breast, 

O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 

And with God be the rest. 

— Browning. 

Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, 
(Since He who knows our need is just,) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play! 

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 
The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death 
And Love can never lose its own ! 

Whither, Snow Bound. 



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